All of a Sudden, These Days
by abi z
Summary: They're Americans. And doesn't it just figure that the best-looking boy in school has to be a Slytherin? Or: John Hughes goes to Hogwarts.


"They're _Americans_," Araminta says across the table. Word about the new students has spread quickly—but, then, they're highly unusual, two orphaned American boys arriving at Hogwarts as a seventh-year and a third-year. Tonks hasn't seen them yet; they've been taken with the first-years, so they won't come in until Sorting.

Hufflepuff, happily reunited, barely shushes itself when Sorting begins—Tonks and her friends have written voluminous letters back and forth all summer, and she's been able to visit and talk to Araminta, Prudence, and Tamesis via Floo, but Pippa and Eugenie, Muggle-borns who live far away, have been reachable only by post. It's just not the same.

But Sorting starts, and it's imperative that one see who will be joining one's house for the rest of their years at Hogwarts—and, by extension, for the rest of their lives—so the Hufflepuffs quiet down. "Their last name is Winchester," whispers Araminta, who always knows everything. "They won't come until the end."

When "Winchester, Dean!" resonates through the Great Hall, there's a pause, then the sounds of a scuffle, and then a chubby boy, looking decidedly disgruntled underneath his mop of dark curls, seats himself on the stool and carefully dons the hat. His face takes on the expression of utter disbelief common to many first-years—especially those who haven't grown up in wizarding households and thus haven't been warned that a wrinkled old hat will talk to you inside your head. Dumbledore's eyebrows have shot up, though Tonks can't figure why—apart from Winchester, Dean's age, nothing's occurred to set this Sorting apart from the one before it or the one after it. The headmaster's expression doesn't change, but he doesn't interrupt as the hat, effectively, decides the course of the rest of this boy's life. After a moment, it calls decisively, "Slytherin!" and Winchester, Dean, runs over to the Slytherin table, but doesn't sit down.

The next name is "Winchester, Samuel!" and Tonks could swear that half the girls in Hufflepuff let out sighs. The Ravenclaw girls are poking each other; the Slytherins are looking less bored than usual; even the Gryffindors have lost their characteristic steadfastness and are talking in hushed voices.

Winchester, Samuel, in a leather jacket and battered jeans, is nice-looking and quite fit—that's undeniable—but Tonks hates when girls get like this. If she wants to talk to this boy, she will—and he might be a nice distraction now that Calvin has finished Hogwarts and buggered off to France and apparently declared it his life goal to shag every French girl available—and either Winchester, Samuel, will like her, or he won't. But she's not going to waste time giggling about it.

Winchester, Samuel, saunters over to the stool, sits on it and somehow manages to look as though he's sprawling casually, and jams the hat onto his head. It looks almost offended at the rough treatment—and then Winchester, Samuel, gets the classic first-year look on his face, and Tonks can't help smiling. No amount of tall, fit American bravado can prepare you for the fact that you're having a telepathic conversation with a thousand-year-old piece of clothing.

The conversation goes on for a while, and at one point Winchester, Samuel, is shaking his head emphatically—Tonks wonders what the hat's suggestion was. Finally, after several minutes of this, the hat says in a tone of what can be characterized only as resignation, "Slytherin." The expression on the younger brother's face is one of sheer relief as Winchester, Samuel, strolls over to the Slytherin table and sits down next to Winchester, Dean, in the space their new housemates make for them.

It would just figure, Tonks thinks, that the best-looking boy in school has to be a Slytherin.

It's a fine autumn Tuesday, mid-October and crisp, and Tonks is walking back to her room from Herbology, taking the long way to enjoy a stroll by the lake and perhaps catch a glimpse of the giant squid. She has a free period next, and she should be catching up on schoolwork, but, she tells herself, she'll do it in the evening. It's too beautiful outside now to concentrate on dusty old History of Magic.

Her contentment is disrupted considerably when she hears shouting.

Wand out, she goes to investigate. It's four against one—Jethro McNair, Gilbert Avery, Fergus Gibbon, and Wolfgang Jugson shooting hexes at a boy she recognizes as one of the Hufflepuff first-years. They're shooting at his feet—making him "dance." Oh, the wit of bullies. She breaks into a run.

She has her mouth open for a Expelliarmus, but someone else gets there first. "Hey, assholes," he says. The timbre and accent are unmistakable—Dean Winchester. (Not, as it turns out, Samuel: Rumor—or, more specifically, Araminta—has it that the older brother pushed the younger one out to be Sorted first, and then when it came to be his turn argued the hat into placing him in Slytherin too.) "Maybe you want to pick on somebody your own fucking size for the first time in your lives?"

"What the hell, Winchester," McNair says. "He's just a little Mudblood Hufflepuff firstie."

"Yeah—no. I don't have the hard-on for people's parents that you guys do, and you guys really need to step back."

The four of them turn—four on one, sixth-years and seventh-years, against someone with barely a month of training. Dean says, calmly, "Stupefy," at the same time Tonks shouts her disarming spell from fifty feet away.

It's stronger than she intended: It disarms not just the four bullies but Dean as well. Avery's unconscious, but Jugson, Gibbon, and McNair turn on Dean, clearly intending to do battle with fists since wands aren't available. McNair throws the first punch; he's taller and broader, but Dean blocks it easily and brings him to the ground with a foot in the stomach at the same time Tonks, closer now, fires a Petrificus at Gibbon and another at Jugson. Avery's out cold, Gibbon and Jugson are frozen, McNair is lying on the grass and clutching his midsection. Dean doesn't have a mark on him, and the little first-year is shaken up but unharmed. Tonks doesn't feel bad about it: McNair and his cronies are bullies and liars, and she can't help thinking they're owed a come-down.

Dean picks up his wand and looks at Tonks for the first time. "Never seen a Hufflepuff in a fight before."

"We leave the antler-locking to the Gryffindors and Slytherins." She looks at the first-year. "I'm Tonks. What's your name?"

"Iknowwhoyouare," the boy says in a hurried murmur.

"Alright, so who are you?"

He tells her.

"Do you want us to walk you back to the dormitory?"

"No. I mean, I can get there. Um, thank you. McNair hates me because he called me a Mudblood and I called him a fat pig."

She has no idea where people get the idea that Hufflepuffs don't stand up for themselves.

"He's a pig alright," Dean agrees. "And a lot of other things too. Sure you don't want us to walk you?"

The boy's probably embarrassed, Tonks thinks, and just wants to go back and hide for a bit. She can't blame him.

"Go ahead," she says. "But if any of these wankers ever bother you again, tell me."

"Or me," adds Dean.

"But they're in your house," the boy objects.

"Does it really look to you like I give a rat's ass about that?"

The boy appears to be trying with admirable but unsuccessful effort to keep from smiling.

They watch him go on his way, back towards the castle. McNair's recovering, so Tonks flicks a Petrificus at him, too. She and Dean Winchester look at each other. "Shall we turn them in to the authorities?" she asks. "Or is the mere threat of our wrath enough, do you think?"

"I say, if they do this again, we clean the floor with them, then we turn them in. But considering that they just got their asses handed to them four against two, we can let 'em stew in their own humiliation for a while." He crouches and pulls McNair to a sitting position. "You hear that, asswipe? I really don't care who your parents are or what house we're in."

Tonks drops down beside him. "And if you're angry about the small size of your knob and need to fight someone to make yourself feel better, try me and I guarantee I'll give you something worse to think about. You won't walk for a week when I'm finished with you." She stands and collects their four wands from where they fell in the grass, then looks at Dean. "Let's go. I'll drop these, and we can lift the spells once we're a little farther away."

"I have a better idea. Give 'em to me, and I'll leave 'em in the girls' bathroom in Slytherin House."

Tonks looks at him with a raised eyebrow. "Do I even want to know how you're going to get inside the girls' bathroom?"

"I'm not. I'll give these to Sam, and he'll give 'em to one of the forty or so girls in his harem."

Tonks laughs. "Your brother's how old, thirteen? And he has a harem already?"

"He doesn't know it yet; he just thinks he has all these girls who hang out with him all the time. He doesn't realize that in a year or two, he's going to grow about a foot taller and lose the baby fat, and then he'll really have a harem."

Tonks can't disagree; it's true. Sam Winchester, with his rare but brilliant smile and, from what the Hufflepuff third-years report, utterly un-Slytherin-like demeanor (Tonks can't help wondering what he's got beneath the shy, intelligent surface), has managed to effortlessly charm students and teachers alike. His brother is no less charming, but in an entirely different way. She says to Dean, serious now, "You realize that those four are going to find ways to get some back from you."

Dean shrugs. "They can try. Oh, yeah, before we forget—" He turns. "Finite incantatem." From the distance, Tonks can see Avery start to wake up; McNair, meanwhile, doesn't rise—she suspects he's still recovering from Dean's kick. Jugson and Gibbon find their feet and make an abortive start in Tonks and Dean's direction; he holds up the wands, and then they seem to remember that now there are even numbers and their opponents are armed besides. They busy themselves with their fallen comrades.

"They're in your house," Tonks goes on. "I wouldn't put it past any of them to do something while you're sleeping, for example."

"Please. I've been setting wards since I was five. None of them are getting at me—or at Sam either, for that matter."

"Since you were five?"

"Who are those people who go after dark wizards—like your police, I guess, or maybe your FBI?"

Startled by the apparent non sequitur, Tonks says, "You mean the Aurors?"

"Right, them. My dad was like that, except not a wizard and he didn't get paid. He raised Sam and me to do that, too. We had to keep out a lot worse than the four of them."

"If you're sure," Tonks says. "But still, be careful. Those four were raised by people whom it was the Aurors' responsibility to bring to justice."

"Then it'll be good practice." Dean grins at her, and with a start, she realizes that it's genuine. He's really not intimidated. "That's kind of what I want to do."

"Become an Auror?"

"Maybe not exactly, since I'm so damn behind here and I know you have to pass a lot of exams for that, but—something like that. Going after evil people, or evil whatever. People do it on their own—my dad did."

"You should talk to Dumbledore or McGonagall. Or Snape, I suppose, since he's your Head of House, if you can bring yourself to go near the great unwashed. You do have to take several NEWTs, but with tutoring you could catch up much more quickly. I want to be one, too," she confesses.

"You? Really?"

"What? Is it because I'm a girl, or because my hair is pink?"

"Neither. God. Some of the woman hunters we know...knew... Anyway. I was going to say that you don't seem like the type for it, but actually that's not true—you charged into that fight."

It's her turn to shrug. "I don't like bullies. Dark wizards are just bullies on a larger level. My mum doesn't want me to do it—says it's too dangerous—but my dad's all for it. And secretly I think she'd be proud if I did."

They're at the Entrance Hall now. Hufflepuff and Slytherin are both underground, but in different directions. "If I know Sam," Dean says, "he's in the common room studying. I should give these to him before any of those morons catch up with us."

Tonks should go study. She knows that. But she...doesn't want to.

"Uh," she says, "thanks for, you know, barging into that. I'll take on four against one, but I really prefer not to."

"Yeah. Me too."

"Right," she says, squaring her shoulders. "I'll see you." She starts to turn towards the door leading to Hufflepuff House.

"Wait," she hears Dean say, and turns. He's staring at the floor and looking quite unlike the sauntering, leather-clad almost-man she first saw in the Great Hall. He mumbles something unintelligible.

"Sorry?" Tonks says.

He's blushing! Tonks is about to ask him if he's alright when he takes a breath and says, only slightly more comprehensibly, "So I hear people are going into town this weekend."

"Right, the Hogsmeade trip." She signed up for it with her friends, as usual.

"Doyouwanttogo."

It takes her a moment to interpret that. Is he... "Are you asking me out on a date?" Then she realizes what she's just said, and promptly prays for the flagstones to open up so that she might pitch herself into the resulting chasm. "I mean, um, I'm sure that you're not. Right. Yes."

He's looking up now—and smiling, the git. "That's how you guys do it here, right? Like, if a guy asks a girl out, they go to Hogsmeade together?"

"Right," she says. "It's the only option, really."

"OK. So I am. Do you want to go or not?"

At breakfast on Thursday, Araminta tells them all that four Slytherins are in the infirmary with especially disgusting gastrointestinal disorders that mysteriously have not been passed to anyone else. At supper, she has more details: names, and the additional fact that they'd all tried to ambush Dean Winchester while he was asleep. It seems he wasn't joking about his ability to set wards.

At breakfast on Friday, Tonks steels herself and asks her friends if they'll forgive her for deserting them on the trip tomorrow.

"Don't tell me you're staying back to study, Tonks!" Araminta exclaims. "That's not on at all!"

"No. I'm, er, I'm going. Just...someone asked me to go with him, and I never wanted to be one of those girls to desert her friends, but there are five of you and you won't miss me, right?"

Prudence raises her eyebrows. "Someone asked you to go with him, did he?"

"Yes," Tonks says, looking resolutely at her eggs.

"If you're going to desert us for some boy," Pippa says, "you might at least do us the courtesy of telling us who asked you and when precisely this asking occurred."

"TuesdayDeanWinchester," Tonks says as quickly as possible.

It's useless. Araminta still shrieks. Tonks prays to the flagstones again. Yet again, they don't respond.

Eyebrows arching over the rim of her teacup, Eugenie says, "You were asked to Hogsmeade three days ago by the boy half the campus—and not just the girls—would like to shag—"

"Eugenie!" Araminta exclaims, but Eugenie is undeterred.

"As I was saying, this took place three days ago, and you are only just informing us now?"

"I despise you all," Tonks informs them.

Tamesis yawns. She's never fully awake before noon, no matter how much tea she consumes and how much the others prod her. She's probably taken in only the last few sentences of the conversation. "We forgive you," she says. "As long as you report back with full details."

On Saturday morning, after breakfast, they go to Hogsmeade.

Sam Winchester, true to his brother's word, is surrounded by a full complement of chattering girls. They head straight for Honeydukes, and Dean looks as though he's forcibly holding himself back from following. Impulsively, Tonks puts her hand on Dean's arm, and he starts. "He'll be fine," Tonks says. "If my count is correct, he's got six Slytherins, four Gryffindors, three Ravenclaws, and two Hufflepuffs with him. Your brother has united the houses in a way that hundreds of years of adult efforts haven't been able to. No one's getting through that army."

"I know," Dean says. "I know, I know, I know. And if they do, Sam will hex them into next week, because he can. I'm just—I'm not used to leaving him on his own."

"The fact that you cheated during Sorting to get placed in his house is testament to that," Tonks says wryly. "I thought Dumbledore's eyebrows were going to levitate off his head." She sees Araminta and Eugenie pass them, behind Dean, followed by Pippa, Prudence, and Tamesis. Eugenie makes a gesture of shockingly obscene implications; Tamesis grins and gives an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Tonks fixes her attention on Dean. She'll worry later about throttling Eugenie. "Anyroad, where do you want to go?"

"I don't really know what's here," Dean says.

Tonks thinks for a moment. "You'd like Zonko's. It's the joke shop. We could go there, and maybe to Honeydukes—that's the sweet shop—and then have something to drink."

Dean is agreeable to that, and they spend nearly an hour in Zonko's. Tonks convinces him not to torment his brother with Hiccup Sweets, but he can't be talked out of a Fanged Frisbee. ("This is the coolest thing I've ever seen!") Sam and his entourage come in just as Tonks and Dean are leaving. Sam looks happy, ears and cheeks pinkened by the brisk autumn day, and Dean's face betrays relief, masked quickly. As they pass, he reaches through the wall of girls to ruffle Sam's hair, laughing at the resulting squawk.

Tonks thinks that entrants to heaven, whether it's filled with choirs of angels or scores of willing virgins per their preference, may not be as overwhelmed by ecstasy as Dean Winchester upon entering Honeydukes.

"Oh. My. God."

Dean (yet again) must be talked out of the Cockroach Clusters, and he's bizarrely fascinated by the blood-flavored lollipops. "You're quite possibly unhinged," Tonks tells him, before remembering that you're not supposed to insult the boy with whom you're on a date. He just grins at her, though, and then sees a shelf of exploding bon-bons.

"Holy sh—um, cow, exploding candy?! I have to try that!"

"I recommend trying it outside—not in an enclosed space."

"Sounds like you speak from experience."

"I may or may not have opened a box of them in my mum's sitting room. The mark on the ceiling may or may not still be there."

They end up with a mountain of candy—Tonks stocks up on Chocoballs, Chocolate Frogs, and sugar quills, as well as the fudge made by Mrs. Flume, some nougat, and some toffee. Dean buys about half the shop. ("Dude! Candy that makes you breathe fire!")

"So," Dean says once they're outside, "where can we go to eat all of this?"

"If we go to Madame Puddifoot's, neither of us will ever hear the end of it." Dean looks at her quizzically, and Tonks says, "Just trust me on this. The Hog's Head is rather dodgy, plus we didn't bring glasses—and anyway, if this is a date, you are not taking me to the Hog's Head. So that leaves the Three Broomsticks."

Tonks's friends, of course, are already there, in a booth near the front—she waves, and then glares at Eugenie, who makes another phenomenally vulgar gesture when Dean's back is turned. They're able to find their own booth, tucked into a corner near the back. Tonks is about to go to the bar for a butterbeer, but Dean says, "Date, remember? Sit."

"Arf."

He rolls his eyes. "What do you want?"

"Butterbeer. The mulled mead is also good, if you want something less sweet."

He's back in a few minutes, with butterbeer for her and the mead for himself. They spread their takings on the table, sampling from each other's, and Tonks laughs when Dean looks a little stunned after eating a pinkish Every Flavor Bean. "I could swear that tasted like...bacon."

"It probably did. Be careful with those. I've been off them ever since getting a tripe-flavored one when I was nine."

They stay there through the afternoon, warm, laughing, and full of sweets. Tonks's friends come over on their way out; gritting her teeth and saying a prayer, Tonks introduces them to Dean, but they all (even Eugenie) behave themselves admirably. Tonks finds out a few more details about Dean's family: He and Sam moved to London last spring, after their father's death ("hunting accident," Dean says, and Tonks can only imagine what he must have been hunting), to live with their mother's parents, whom they'd never met. "I guess there was a big falling-out when my mom married my dad—she went to the U.S. on vacation when she was like nineteen and just never came back, it sounds like. So there's this whole side of my family that I didn't even know existed."

"There's a similar situation in my family, too," Tonks says, and explains the great scandal of Andromeda Black marrying Ted Tonks. "But my mother's family—well, I don't think it's any great loss, not knowing them. One of her sisters is in prison for—" Tonks breaks off, not wanting Dean to think that she might be anything like Aunt Bellatrix. "For a lot of bad things," she finishes lamely, but he doesn't press. "And her other sister is married to this tremendous arsehole who should be in prison but isn't, purely because of his money and family connections. They have a son, but I've never met him; he's several years younger than I am."

"My grandparents aren't anything like that," Dean says. "Just kind of...stuffy. They have all these old things in their house that you're not supposed to touch."

"Oh, my father's mother, too. She covers her sitting-room furniture with plastic!"

They're dividing a Pumpkin Pasty to share when a shadow sweeps over the table. Tonks and Dean look up at the same time to see Professor and Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, impressive in her black robes—she's among the staff who chaperoned the trip. "Good afternoon, Winchester, Tonks. No, don't get up—I'll be only a moment. It's my understanding that some...unofficial law enforcement took place earlier this week."

Dean and Tonks simultaneously turn their stares to the tabletop.

Professor McGonagall goes on, "While I am sure that young Smithson appreciated the intervention—and intervening was certainly the proper thing with no adults about—it is nevertheless the job of the faculty and administration, and not the students, to carry out disciplinary actions."

Dean and Tonks continue staring at the table.

"May I have your word that any further incidents will be reported according to school rules—not to mention common sense?"

"Yes, Professor," they say as one.

"Winchester, the headmaster and I would like to meet with you Monday. You do not have any free periods that day, correct?"

"Um, yes, ma'am, that's correct."

"Then we will meet after your last class, before supper. I will expect you at the headmaster's office."

Dean looks a little bit perplexed, but says, "Yes, ma'am."

"Good. We will be returning to campus in fifteen minutes, so you should begin to gather your things."

When she's out of earshot, Dean says, "I'm not sure if I'm in trouble or not."

"Oh, you're not. You'd know. Did you ask her about becoming an Auror?"

"No, I asked Flitwick. Dumbledore seems alright but he still kind of weirds me out, McGonagall's freaking scary, and Snape practically gets steam coming out of his ears every time he looks at me lately. I guess Flitwick must have talked to her, though."

They redivide their sweets. Tonks struggles into her jumper—she's forever getting enmeshed in the thing, and if Dean laughs, she'll kill him—and Dean shrugs on his jacket. It's only when they're outside, waiting for the stragglers to catch up as the chaperons do the head count, that Tonks feels his fingers interlace with hers.


End file.
